Life of Edward Weston traced through his photos

Sunday

Jan 30, 2011 at 12:01 AMJan 30, 2011 at 1:23 PM

The images that follow spin a narrative of the artist's life and work over five decades on the vanguard of fine-art photography.

The first image that visitors encounter in "Edward Weston: Life Work," at Capital University in Bexley, works something like the establishing shot in a movie. Taken in 1908, the self-portrait shows the artist as still a photographer in training. A handsome, eager young man appears in the frame, his box camera by his side.

The images that follow spin a narrative of the artist's life and work over five decades on the vanguard of fine-art photography.

The traveling exhibition reveals the consistent, rigorous, formal considerations of the artist, from his early days as a portraitist and pictorialist through his retirement in the late 1940s - brought on by Parkinson's disease. The works also show the tight bonds between Weston's career path and the places, friends and women who filled his time.

After opening a portrait studio in 1911, Weston experimented with processes, exposures and compositions to elevate a documentary medium to an art form. His lovely Portrait of a Bride, for example, shares a glowing soft focus with the impressionists.

Weston continued taking portraits for years to pay the bills - and to capture friends such as a smiling Diego Rivera. But, as an anecdote in the posted information explains, he hated retouching to placate clients' vanity. The photographer aimed for the unadulterated essence of his subjects and the organic lines and rhythms that unite them.

In travels to Mexico with his model and romantic partner, Tina Modotti, Weston shot the curves of indigenous pottery and, in Excusado, a toilet. His studies ripen with nature-made shapes and a greater control of his frame in several iconic, highly sensual still lifes, such as Pepper #30 and Nautilus Shell.

Weston's view expanded in the late 1920s with a developing interest in landscape - which lasted the rest of his career. Although he thought the pictures captured more of a mood than an essence, the hills of California's Big Sur and sand dunes of Carmel continue the smooth lines and curves of his still lifes. Age brought a fascination with decay, seen in images of a fire-scorched car finish and a vulture carcass on a lake bed.

But it's another long-standing area of interest for Weston - the nude - that produces his most captivating images.

The flexibility of a model's body gave him a level of formal control that scenes of nature couldn't, resulting in classic images such as the near-surreal Civilian Defense and Charis, Santa Monica.

The latter is one of many images featuring Weston's second wife, Charis Wilson. Although the study of line and shadow in the female anatomy is his primary concern, the artist can't help projecting his intimacy with his subject - which comes through most touchingly with her sleeping form in New York Interior.

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